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Comment by adrianN | Hacker News Reader

Doomsday messages are coming in in rapid succession. First the permafrost is melting 70 years earlier than expected, then Greenland losing massive amounts of ice, then glaciers that provide fresh water for hundreds of millions in India and China disappearing at an alarming rate, now this.

And still politicians do nothing. What we need is an effort to build renewables, insulate homes, and build charging infrastructure that rivals the Apollo program, what we get are "freedom molecules" and "clean coal".

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Don't forget that all the insects (the single largest link in the animalian food chain) are dying.

Politicians long ago forgot that their job is to instigate improvement in society, and now relegate themselves to either decrying or defending the status quo. I'm beginning to fear that the Apollo program might actually be the greatest societal effort the US will ever undertake.

I’m not sure politicians have ever seen their jobs as instigating improvements to society. I think they see their job as to protect the interests of the biggest contributors to their campaigns. There was a time when that was organized labor, which is as close as you’re going to get to the “will of the people”, but now it’s mostly big business.

There did seem to be a tendency to try in the immediate post-war era. Even the right, hands off, side of politics were increasing state services and benefits. In no small part as a consequence of coming back from the war, so soon after the previous one, generating a widespread mood of "now we must do better". It mostly survived through the sixties, and finally died with the 73 oil crisis. That caused the chaos of the rest of the seventies that resulted in the course we're still on today.

Keep in mind the decimation of insect populations likely has very little to do with global warming and more to do with pollutions like agricultural insecticides, deforestation, etc.

Not just politicians. And still citizens do nothing. Meat consumption is rising (one of the best things we can do personally is stop eating meat and dairy). Travel is increasing. Consumption...

Why is not eating meat/dairy "one of the best things we can do personally"?

Because land-use change is a leading cause of climate change, and most land-use change is happening to grow and harvest animals. Add on top of that the monoculture crops are also largely grown to feed animals, and those monocultures also drive climate change.

Eating a plant based diet is great, but even switching to locally raised, pasture grown animals can be a positive. But ultimately pastures need to be re-wilded into natural forests. Beef needs to become an expensive luxury and not a dietary staple.

Agree about beef becoming an expensive luxury, but Oxford and CSIRO etc scientists have shown that pasture grown animals are worse for climate change. Sequestration doesn't cover their emissions... http://www.ox.ac.uk/news/2017-10-03-grass-fed-beef-good-or-b...

Producing meat consumes a lot of resources. Especially if its beef.

https://i.imgur.com/JAMsYHk.gif

Why constraint yourself voluntarily instead of simply paying co2 tax? If meat production hurts climate, let’s just make it expensive (not the meat itself, but the process which produces co2) and let free market work towards stopping climate change.

Maybe you don’t eat meat but instead buying something else which hurts climate 20 times more? Nobody knows.

My guess is that this is related to the "exponential growth" of humanity

Which is related to capitalism needing it to even "work".

All these doomsday messages! And they have zero impact on the quality of my life. I wonder why nobody cares. \s

Kaiyou falls off a 10-story building. As he passes the sixth story, someone yells from the window, “How’s it going?” He yells back, “So far, so good!”

This conversation is now 30 years old. Still, so far, so good.

Well, that is the thing about hitting the ground— you can be milliseconds away and everything still looks fine. In a few decades, historians will be able to look back and identify the key events and turning points in all this. I suspect that the stuff we're seeing now will be eventually seen as part of the transition from "getting bad slowly" to "getting bad very quickly". But obviously it's hard to know without the full benefit of hindsight.

I suspect it won't be earlier than in a few centuries.

All signs point to you being wrong.

What data does your suspicion derive from?

Because historians work on different time scales. Stuff from only a few decades ago is still politics, not history.

That's quite the non-sequitur. What relationship are you implying between this supposition and the scientific facts of climate change? Would your argument change if it were astronomers telling you an asteroid would hit in 5 years?

I was replying to > In a few decades, historians will be able to look back

Historians don't look back only a few decades. That's still politics. Sorry if that wasn't clear.

My mistake, I thought we were still discussing climate change, not dropping into definitional pedantry.

Since we're into definitional pedantry, you're incorrect anyway: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contemporary_history

Good riddance

from what is reported already happening, expect massive (hundreds of millions) climate refugees to really get going within the next five to ten years.

The problem is that the climate will be fucked beyond repair when ordinary people in rich countries feel the impact on their quality of life. We need to act way before that point.

I'm not planning to stop you from acting. Do as you wish.

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